(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for processing two-dimensional data, and more particularly to a technique for simultaneously establishing manipulative capability and data-reusability.
(2) Related art of the Invention
Recently, there have been widely used spreadsheet software allowing easy entry, totalization and analysis of data on a display screen. Such spreadsheet software are characterized in that manipulative capability thereof is superior to that of database management software since data manipulation is performed in a human-understandable tabular format.
As an example of a usage situation of spreadsheet software such as in business, there can be perceived such a situation that monthly received orders of respective branches are gathered to a main office, and the ordered numbers for each commercial product are totalized there. In this case, the totalization of the ordered numbers for each commercial product is performed monthly. For the purpose of performing automatically such a regular task, a spreadsheet program is provided with a macro function. In such a macro function, manipulations for a regular task procedure are to be registered, and these registered manipulations are later invoked and executed as required, to thereby automatically perform the regular task.
Macro functions are useful for rendering a regular task to be automatically executed, insofar as concerned with tabular format data (two-dimensional data) having the same caption layout. However, there is a problem as follows. Namely, since macro functions assume manipulations for respective cells, macro functions cannot be applied to tabular format data if the data includes a slightly different number of rows and/or slightly different caption layout of columns. To cope with caption layouts different to each other, it is not impossible to realize a macro function by using a programming language. However, this requires knowledge comparable to development of application software, which can be hardly performed by a general user. Summarizing the above, spreadsheet software have involved such a problem that data reuse is difficult though the manipulative capability is excellent.
Meanwhile, there exists a way to re-input tabular format data into a relational database, and to utilize queries to thereby totalize the ordered numbers for each commercial product. Although the relational database is utilized so that data can be reused, there is required specialized knowledge for a table design and a query definition. Namely, the method to utilize a relational database has involved such a problem that the manipulative capability is not excellent though data is readily reused.
The present invention has been carried out in view of the conventional problems as described above, and it is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a two-dimensional data processing technique in which various totalization of tabular format data can be performed while keeping the tabular format, to thereby simultaneously establish manipulative capability and data-reusability.